The Null Device

Posts matching tags 'sexuality'

2010/3/23

Gay marriage: the database engineering perspective, or how different definitions of the institution of marriage would be reflected in different (relational) database schemas. Not surprisingly, the strictly traditionalist schemas do hideously inelegant things like have different tables for men and women, or mark one gender as subordinate to the other (i.e., have the males table contain a wife_id column), while the most elegant ones reduce marriage to a type of edge in generalised social networking, leaving policy (can you marry yourself for tax reasons? can more than two people be married?) outside of the schema.

I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, some technically ignorant legislator in some conservative backwater proposed a law requiring databases to have separate tables for men and women or something similarly brain-damaged.

In court papers, the plaintiffs allege that the Greek government is so embarrassed by the term Lesbian that it has been forced to rename the island after its capital, Mytilini.

If they succeed, they plan to take the fight across the world to claim the word "Lesbian" back. Of which, of course, they stand about as much chance as Xerox and Band-Aid have of reclaiming their trademarks from generic use, hackers have of claiming the word "hacker" back from those who break into computers, or (your favourite music genre) has of dissociating itself from (watered-down commercial variant thereof).

One year ago:

2017/11/15

LGBT+ Australians and their allies can breathe a cautious sigh of relief as one prolonged chapter of the national culture-war pantomime comes to a close, with
61.6% of Australians voting to legalise same-sex marriage .

Two years ago:

2016/11/14

As the US counts down the days to the inauguration of President Trump, some voices in the technology industry are calling for the industry to start scrubbing user data , before the new government's surveillance apparatus

Five years ago:

2013/11/5

I am back in Reykjavík, Iceland; this time, I came here on occasion of Kraftwerk playing a gig at the Harpa concert hall. Having missed out on tickets to see them in New York (when they